Analyzing the topology characteristic and effectiveness of the China city network

The topology characteristic and effectiveness of city network play critical roles in guiding transportation infrastructure planning and construction. From empirical evidence of three types of transportation infrastructure in China’s urbanization process—railway, civil aviation, and highway—we propose a new city network construction method based on the transportation infrastructure links between cities. Degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality are selected as measuring indicators for analyzing the topology characteristic of the China city network, and the shortest path length is used to measure the effectiveness of the China city network from the node level and the overall level. Based on public and open data and combining analysis methodologies, we explore the topology characteristic and effectiveness of the China city network. The analysis results show that the topology characteristic of the China city network presents disequilibrium on geographical distribution. Network node effectiveness is positively correlated to the economic development level of cities in the China city network, and different sub-networks present different overall network effectiveness. The analysis results of the Dalian–Yantai subsea tunnel show that although the effectiveness of the China city network can be greatly improved through increasing links between cities with no direct link, transportation infrastructure planning and construction has different impacts on the topology characteristic of the China city network. The topology characteristic and effectiveness of each city in the China city network should be considered comprehensively in the process of transportation planning and construction.